independence

so i think i've been pretty independent (aka hard headed) for most of my life. dave is also very hard headed.

hard headed + hard headed = trouble

no, not with me and dave's relationship (well, sometimes with our relationship, but this isn't what the post is about)...with our two little ones.

caleb is at the stage of exerting his independence...with everything.

putting food in the microwave...he wants to do it (press the buttons, close the door).

getting something from the refrigerator...he wants to do it (open door, get whatever it is, close the door).

getting into the car...he wants to do it (climb up himself, close the door, close sister's door, climb into his seat, buckle himself in).

going out of the house...he wants to do it (put on his crocs, open the door, close the door).

bocha time...he wants to do it (turn on the light, close the door, take off his diaper, turn on the water, turn on the shower, turn off the water).

i'm sure there are countless other examples, but you get the point.

yes, we love that he is independent...the problem is that if he doesn't get to do it, all hell breaks loose. seriously. and he will throw a freakin' fit loudly...forever... this is especially difficult when we're in a rush...cuz brother takes forever and a day to do it HIS way.

brynna is also exerting her independence. today at the doctor's office she wanted to crawl around...when we had to pick her up, she did the holding my breath cuz i'm so pissed off kind of cry. that kind of cry with caleb...expected. that kind of cry from brynna...surprising. guess my mellow little girl has some feisty-ness in her too.

can't wait to see what life will be like when she's two and he's three!!!!

randoms

caleb slept over at his grandparent's house for the second time last night. it sure is nice to not have to put that guy to bed once in a while.

right now he's watching super why and i'm quite sure that he needs a nap, but it's already 3:30p. it's either going to be a nap now and a hard bedtime, or no nap now and intense crappy attitude and meltdowns in a couple hours.

since we only had brynbryn today and dave wanted to watch football, we headed out to target, longs and times to get everything out of the way. shopping with just one baby is soooo easy!!!!! side note about shopping...don't know who was the genius who designed the shopping carts at costco, but i LOVE the double seating. however, now that they've changed their carts, i can no longer push the kids because the cart is so high that with the kids in it, i can't see over them anymore.

i've been trying to be better about meal-planning for the week, but i still have a hard time gauging what will be enough to give us leftovers for lunch the next day and/or for dinner the following night. last week we had shrimp/broc alfredo, fresh corned beef, pork ribs, and blue cheese meatloaf. two of the four were cooked in the crockpot, which i'm trying to make more use of. this week i have planned chicken and sausage gumbo, spinach pasta bake, chicken pad thai, and chicken cutlet. the gumbo is cooking in the crockpot now, but we have leftovers for tonight so we'll have it tomorrow.

i busted out all my new crafting stuff today for a little while but had absolutely no creativity and made some hideously crappy little notecards so i put everything away. i need to go look on some sites to get some ideas of how to use my new stuffs.

i finally, after months of wanting to, bought myself a starbucks double-wall insulated cup. i have admired it from afar for a long time, and even bought a few for gifts for peeps, but couldn't bring myself to buy one for me. but friday night, after looking longingly at someone else's cup, i asked dave if i could buy one for myself. lol. simple pleasures.

please, a full night's rest...

it's 9:34 and i'm about to brush my teeth and get in bed. last night's "festivities" have left me pooped. i'm sure i'll start reading my book and it will fall on my face, much like last night. i'm just hoping brynbryn has a good night's sleep again tonight, and that caleb doesn't do a repeat of last night.

i'm still hungry and i dunno for what but i'm too lazy to try to figure it out. lol.

so sad.

today is the first day at school without my bff...lol. you know, you'd think it wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it does. when i was getting ready for school this morning, all i could think about was that today was the first day without her. dramatic, i know, but true.

this morning was the first morning when i didn't have a visitor (well, besides one guy who visits every morning, and no, it's not my husband).

this recess was the first recess i didn't get a call or call her.

lunch will be just me and my husband... :-(

my book #2 is due on monday, and i don't even have anyone to talk to about the book assignment.

all i know is thank GOD for texting!!!!!

caleb, aka night owl

sooo...caleb did not take a nap yesterday. he laid down (dude, i dunno if that's correct english) for a while, but did not sleep. needless to say, he was a grouch in the evening. dave gave him a shower around 6pm and he was screaming the whole time (apparently it was because he wanted to take off his own diaper but didn't get to). after his shower he wanted to be carried, so i did, and although i wanted to feed him, he promptly fell asleep. i threw him in bed...hoping for the best (he'd sleep through the night), expecting the worst (he'd wake up and not wanna go back sleep).

at 12:30a, brynna got up to eat. apparently her crying woke caleb up and he came to our room. dave told him to get in bed with me as he fed brynna. brynna went back to sleep...caleb did not. i remember getting up at 115 to get him some milk in the kitchen...then drifting in and out of sleep as the little guy climbed up and down our bed, took up all of my space and my pillow, and proceeded to talk to himself, knock on the crib, and try to wake us up. dave got up a few times to take him to the kitchen...i think. he finally went back to sleep sometime after four. brynna woke up again at 5a to drink. all i could think was, hallelujah, i still have an hour more to sleep.

i'm not too tired right now, but we'll see how much of a raging biznatch i am by the end of the day when we have tutoring...at least we still have leftovers from last night so i don't have to cook dinner tonight!

pierced ears

we did it! we pierced brynna's ears today. i was a little bit hesitant just because i was scared about the actual procedure, and about it getting infected or her pulling on it. but we did it anyways and it's sooooo cute to see my little girl with earrings.

later on i'll give brynna my first set of diamond earrings and explain to her the trauma behind it. my dad gave them to me when i was in the second grade and one day i noticed one was gone. i was sick because i didn't want to get busted by my dad. i'm not sure how we kept it from him, and my mom was even going to buy me a replacement one, but a month after losing it, we found it...on the ground in my classroom!!!!! how weird is that???

i wonder if brynna will be the kind of girl who changes her earrings to match her outfits everyday, or if she'll be like me and wear the same studs every single day. all i know is that i better make sure i take care of them good so they don't get infected...it makes me a little bit scared to clean them but dave said he won't do it cuz he's scared. lol.

sleep over and ears

caleb slept over at his grandparent's house last night...at first i was a little bit hesitant, but after thinking about how nice it would be NOT to fight with him to go to sleep for a night, i figured, ah, it's all good.

a night with just brynna was wonderful. she went to bed at about 830p, drank at 1030p, drank again at 130a, and then again at 530a. i was able to correct some papers, watch some tv and even read since i didn't have to put caleb to bed.

today i am planning to pierce brynna's ears, even though i'm a little bit scared. we'll see if i actually do it...

yay!

oh thank goodness. caleb took a nap during the day yesterday so he wasn't a cranky butt all evening long. he went to sleep at a normal time (although it did take several times of walking him back to his bed and eventually I did lie down with him until he went to sleep). he crawled into bed with us sometime before 6 and went back to sleep without waking brynna up. :-) got up again at about 645 in a happy mood so i'm hoping he'll go down for a nap again today.

brynna cried herself to sleep at about 930p, then woke up at 2 and 430 to drink. not bad. she didn't wake up besides those times so it was good. probably could have let her cry again at 430.

feeling a little bit more rested today!!!

not bad night...considering....

so...caleb slept through the night for the most part. he got up at 1215 crying and wanting to be carried. as i picked him up i said a little prayer...i carried him out into the living room because i didn't want him to wake up my mom (though i shouldn't have worried, she was snoring away...lol) and put him on the couch...he asked (whined) for water so i got up to get him some. when i got back to the couch, he was sleeping again and so i lay down on the couch with him to sleep...of course, me and him on the couch is not very comfortable, so when i was sure he was sleeping, i picked him up and carried him back to his bed, tucked him in, made sure he would stay sleeping, and headed back to my own bed. so, all in all, caleb had a good sleep cuz he didn't bother me again until 6 a.m., when he climbed into our bed.

brynna, on the other hand, had a hard night. we had decided to let her just cry for the most part...and boy did she cry. i guess it's especially hard because she'll stand up and peer over the edge of the crib at us on the bed...and scream because we aren't responding to her. it's HARD to sleep with a screaming baby. she must have got up at least 4 times crying....dave fed her twice. the hard part, i was telling dave, is that i can't just sleep through her cries...and i can't go to sleep after she's done crying because i keep worrying that she'll have her head buried in the pillow or the blanket and won't be able to breathe.

needless to say, we're tired today, but overall, the night was better than i expected.

sleep problems

i read it and heard it a million times before caleb..."sleep now because you won't get a full night's rest for a while."

i really wish i had the kind of baby who freakishly slept through the night at 3 months old...but i don't.

brynna still wakes up at least twice a night. she hasn't been drinking as much when she wakes up, so we're thinking that we need to let her just cry because she obviously doesn't need the milk.

caleb has been refusing to take a nap in the day. he'll go in the room and lie down, but won't sleep. late afternoon or early evening rolls around and he'll start to zonk out...even if he's sitting up in a chair. we try to give him a bath to wake him up, but the past two days even that hasn't helped.

right now, at 7:24 pm, he's crashed out on the couch...and has been crashed out for about an hour and a half. yesterday he took a late nap...we tried to wake him up after half an hour by showering him, but he just wailed throughout the shower and proceeded to pass out again once his shower was over. after we woke him up again, he did not want to go back to sleep until after 11. today i'm going to not wake him up and see how that works. he didn't even eat dinner. we'll see what's going to happen.

dress shopping

today was our first day of dress hunting with tash. she got voted to be her junior prom queen, which is soooooo cool. now it's time to find an appropriate dress that tash likes and her aunty will approve of....and that will be difficult. we went to six places today but only tried on dresses at two.

i didn't quite understand how difficult dress shopping is for tash until we did it for the first time when we were looking for her 8th grade banquet dress. even at that age, no matter what kind of dress we tried, her boobs were the first thing anyone would see when looking at her. the dress we eventually found was nixed by her aunty because of the amount of cleavage that showed.

so now it's prom time and i'm expecting that finding the right dress is going to take a few more visits to the stores. the best one we saw, a white, strapless, sweetheart cut bedazzled dress may get vetoed by the aunty because of the cleavage factor. i told tash that probably the best cut for her is going to be strapless with a straight across cut...yes, the boobs will still be evident, but at least it won't show as much cleavage as a halter type neckline.

my vote is still for a white dress, but tash is a lot more daring than me when it comes to colors so i think she'll end up with something quite colorful...lol.

so dang tired

one more class before the first week of quarter three is pau.

i'm TIRED. like really, freakin' EXHAUSTED. like i didn't even try to grade papers during this prep cuz it would have been pointless and led me to fall asleep. like i wanna go home and get in bed and take a nice, long nap (which i know ain't gonna happen).

caleb has been skipping his nap during the day, getting tired and cranky around dinner time, then passing out at 8 (or before) while being read to. he hasn't been getting up super early or getting up in the middle of the night, so i guess it's a good thing. i still want him to nap, though, so he's not a raging grouch...but he refuses to sleep during the day when my mom tries to put him down. hard-headed that boy....

brynna's fifth tooth is coming out. no wonder she's been chewing like no nuff on the nipple of the bottle. luckily this one broke through without the pain the last two gave her. she's been waking up a couple times a night but not finishing her milk. i think she's waking up out of habit and because she can't breathe through her stuff nose. she even has a hard time drinking cuz she'll have to pause every few sips to breathe through her mouth. poor girl. she fights hard when you try to clean her nose, though...she's a strong little girl!

don't know what we're doing this weekend. i got a butt-load of revised research papers to look at, which sucks royally. at least they're all saved on my jump drive so i don't have to lug tons of papers home.

think i'll make some pork soup tonight...perfect for this hella cold weather.

all pau!

this shorter winter break sure goes by quickly...i think i liked the longer break here and the shorter summer better.

i can't really say that break was relaxing, although we did do a lot of "hanging out" at home due to sicknesses and surgeries. the kids both got sick early in the break and the hanabata nose is still lingering. dave had his surgery on the 21st and complications from the surgery kept us from doing a lot outside of the house.

here's some thoughts from this holiday season...

christmas with two kids is like nothing i've ever seen before. the gifts are wonderful and maybe next christmas the two will actually understand and be excited about opening gifts...as it was, though, caleb got distracted about halfway through and started to play with the opened toys and dave had to finish up opening. brynna was most content to sit and chew on ribbon. i have to remember to be more careful with writing down who gave what so i can do my thank you cards accurately.

speaking of thank you cards...sheesh...now i not only gotta write thank you cards for me and dave, but brynna and caleb too! that's a lot, but my gramma really drilled into my head the need for prompt thank you cards!

i asked dave the other night if he thinks we'll ever "celebrate" new year's again. he said maybe when the kids are older. hehe. i doubt it. as it is now i just wanna make sure we're home well before the craziness begins. the kids were sleeping before ten and we were in bed well before twelve...and then the freakin' loudest, longest fireworks session began and lasted for a good 40 minutes after midnight. i tell you, the sound of silence after the festivities is the nicest sound ever.

new year's day was quiet...i was too lazy to invite anyone over so it was just us with miso soup and tempura. dave had to stay off his feet so it was good to just stay home and chillax.

this christmas i gave everybody gift cards instead of shopping. i think next year i'll go back to shopping...by then the kids should be old enough that i can handle going shopping with them. gift cards sure made it easier, though. i actually missed wrapping gifts...but with the two around, wrapping gifts is not a very feasible idea.

no resolutions for 2011...i'm too blackbrained to even remember if i make resolutions so no sense. time to get back into the habit of sleeping early and waking up early!